Mick Lynch: ‘You knew you were Irish, but most of the people you knew were too’

The headquarters of the RMT [National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers], a couple of streets up from Euston station in London, is a little bit of a comedown on the rather grand building its predecessor, the National Union of Railwaymen, used to occupy directly opposite the station. But even the organisation’s current General Secretary Mick Lynch acknowledges that the union, like the railway, is not quite what it was in its heyday.

The union, which is in the 10th month of a high-profile dispute with Britain’s rail operators, various train companies and, by extension, the British government, used to have more than 400,000 members. That was when the system they worked on not only transported people and the coal that kept the economy running, but also delivered parcels up and down the country. Now, it’s a little more than a fifth of that size. The current dispute, the union would argue, is in no small part about halting that decline.

Sitting in his office before this week’s latest round of scheduled stoppages and ahead of a revised offer from Network Rail that has raised the prospect of at least a partial settlement, Lynch comes across as a man who would like to see a deal done but, he insists, “not at any price”.

“We realise that there’s going to be a compromise at some stage,” he says. But when asked about the “reforms” demanded by the other side, he replies: “That’s where there headbutting comes in. The railway’s got to change, but it’s not just us that’s got to change. They’ve got to change their ways as well, these companies extracting huge profits then claiming the railways are all losing money.

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“They think if they crush the unions they’ll make more money, but they won’t crush the union, that’ll never happen.”

Lynch, you suspect, wouldn’t be the only person who would be happy to see the dispute end. A series of high-profile broadcast appearances in which attempts by the likes of Richard Madeley and Piers Morgan set out to interview the 61-year-old in a combative manner, without actually dealing in any way with the issues at the heart of the dispute, were met with a mix of bemusement and scorn that made Lynch a hero to many on Britain’s left and exposed the television personalities to ridicule.

I can’t have my ideal left-wing candidate, I’ve got to go with the candidate who is going to oppose the Tories

Eight months on, Lynch still seems a little perplexed by the fact that Morgan, for instance, persisted with a line of questioning that focused on his use of a picture of The Hood, a character in the 1960s puppet show Thunderbirds, as his avatar on social media and the suggestion that he was therefore comparing himself to “the most dangerous, evil person in the world”.

“I don’t mind doing interviews, I find them quite stimulating, you know, Channel Four, Newsnight or whatever,” he says. “It’s interesting and it’s better than not getting any coverage. You don’t want to be an obscure union leader in the midst of a massive dispute. But it’s been a bit weird, a bit surreal the way it’s taken off, because you’ve got a lot more media there.

“[The Morgan interview] was really weird. The picture was to do with a joke a friend made years ago about the bald head and eyebrows, but he went in as though it was the main story in a national dispute about public services, then couldn’t seem to get himself off it. It just seemed weird for someone in a high-profile, professional job.”

[ 2022: Union leader Mick Lynch wins the admiration of millions by channelling James Connolly ]

The encounter, along with various others, went viral and won him considerable acclaim among a portion of the population who feel alienated by the politics of most of the British mainstream media. There, as in Ireland, though, there were reservations over his and his union’s position on Brexit which the RMT supported at the time of the referendum. His view on Brexit has not shifted.

The comedian Stewart Lee suggested Lynch’s TV appearances were making “future Marxist guerrillas of millions of impressionable schoolchildren” but called him a “Brexit arse” who “presents a conundrum to Remainer fundamentalists like me”.

“You might call him a liberal arse,” Lynch responds drily. “The only thing that’s important is that the supply of oregano and olives, and how you get to your holiday, should all be uninterrupted, but we were asked a question because the government was going to have a referendum. And the traditional left position in Britain, as it was the traditional republican position in Ireland, of mainstream republicans, was that if you wanted a sovereign country, you can’t just give yourself over to another regime.”

The EEC that both countries joined 50 years ago was, Lynch believes, a good thing. But, he argues, it has evolved into something altogether different, an entity with the power to force policies on member states with privatisation one of those it champions.

“We [the RMT] think that liberalisation of industries, such as rail, energy distribution and health, will eventually lead them to them all being privatised by the EU. That is happening in the French, Italian and Spanish railways now: they are having to open themselves up to competition,” he says.

You don’t want to be an obscure union leader in the midst of a massive dispute. But it’s been a bit weird

The union’s hope is that a Labour government in Britain will, as the party has said it would, renationalise the British system – although Keir Starmer’s suggestion that he would be “pragmatic” might be taken as the first step in letting backers of the idea down gently.

Lynch says he can only take the public pronouncements on public ownership and repeal of trade union legislation at face value for the moment as, he says, his choice, is “binary” under the British electoral system. “I can’t have my ideal left-wing candidate, I’ve got to go with the candidate who is going to oppose the Tories.”

He supported, he says, the policies of Starmer’s predecessor Jeremy Corbyn “but I didn’t ever think he was ever going to be prime minister if I’m honest with you”. He adds: “People forget how right-wing people like Harold Wilson, Jim Callaghan and Clement Attlee were, but they achieved profound things because they were bold.”

Born in Paddington to father, Jackie, from Cork, and mother Ellen, from close to Crossmaglen, Co Armagh, Lynch grew up in Wilson’s Britain, the youngest of five in a working-class family. “You knew you were Irish but most of the people you knew were too. I thought everyone was a Catholic, even the Caribbean people.”

The family were political but not activists. Growing up in London, Lynch says, “I really enjoyed it. I mean, London’s a really tolerant town. What people love about it is the indifference, nobody really cares who you are. There are some racists and bigots, but the majority of people just get on with it.”

Having worked as a factory machinist and then, when the factory closed down, getting blacklisted on the building sites for union activity, Lynch is one of a generation of trade union leaders – along with the likes of Unite’s Sharon Graham, Unison’s Christina McAnea and Dr Jo Grady of the University and College Union – with strong Irish roots. After the blacklisting, for which he later received £35,000 in compensation, he got a job on the railways and, “as a bit of a motormouth, got elected a rep and off I went”. He became a full-time official in 2015.

The family of his wife, Mary Waldron, came from Ballyhaunis, Co Mayo, and they have three grown-up children, Róisín, Connie and James.

London’s a really tolerant town. What people love about it is the indifference, nobody really cares who you are

Lynch’s son played Gaelic football for a local team and he speaks highly of the GAA’s organising abilities. He and his father used to go and see the Irish rugby team when they played at Twickenham. But soccer is a particular interest – Chelsea – and, since the tickets started to become harder to come by 20 years ago, Brentford in London as well as Cork City back in Ireland.

When he recalls his childhood, he can barely remember any Dubliners featuring: “Everyone was from the counties.” A game at Dalymount Park a few years back presented some evidence, he reckons, of the enduring division in Ireland.

“There were about 200 Cork fans there, and one of them turns up with this big banner and says ‘Hold this, will you.’ It’s about 12 feet long and I’m trying to see what’s on it. And it’s ‘Éire = 31, F**k the Dubs’,” he says, chuckling.

“So this sergeant comes over and tell him to take it down, ‘You can’t be doing that.’ And he tells her to f**k off. So she tells him that if he doesn’t pack it away, she’s going to arrest him, and he sighs and folds it up, puts it in his bag. So I go down to the bar at half-time and it’s full of north Dubs, all big versions of Robbie Keane, and he walks in and I thought, ‘They’re going to beat the shit out of this guy in a minute’, but it’s all ‘Howya Paddy,’ they all know each other. Turns out he comes every year.”